


Shades of Words

by shellalana



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Abusive Mother, Angst, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Racism, shadism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellalana/pseuds/shellalana
Summary: Amara's childhood.





	Shades of Words

**Author's Note:**

> I've been tempted for a long time now to write something related to Amara and the shadism attitude of India, and how it applied to her being a Siren. This is much shorter than I wanted to be but I had too many feelings getting this out that I didn't want to linger on it too much longer.  
Give a like, leave a comment, tell me what you think. Thanks for reading!

She stared at me like I had three heads. She'd probably cry less if I did.

_Witch._

_We can fix it_, she said when I was able to dress myself. Or at least, my best attempts at it. Five years of asking questions about these strange blue marks had yielded no results. Her suggestion to fix them was met with hesitation.

_Blasphemer._

At six, she showed me how to use the makeup sponge, how to apply the concealer over my entire arm to hide my mystery from even me. Still no answers. I was supposed to continue pretending that they didn't exist.

Covering them made her happy. She smiled more, actually looked at me when she talked instead of fixing her eyes somewhere else. She would hug me more too.

Until I showered and the streaks of brown concealer would disappear down the drain, leaving my arm bare and blue again.

I can't remember the last time she kissed me goodnight. Or even tucked me in.

It would start again the next day. Then the next, and then the next, until eight whole years of this routine passed me by. Eight years of being the good little girl she wanted.

But what she wanted was starting to matter less and less.

So I lied.

_Cursed._

I lied about painting my arm, pulling my sleeves down to cover it all the way to the wrist. I lied and walked out with my shoulders back, my head held high, and ready to show the world who I truly was.

_Plague._

I broke several noses that day and took a few good licks myself. The names they slung at me, the spits and curses when someone noticed my mystery and ripped the sleeve from my shirt.

(It was my good shirt too, I was so fond of it)

_Amara._

My name was bellowed like one of their curses, so shrill and startling that I dropped the shirt of the man whose face I had been breaking in. There stood my dear sweet mother, with tears in her eyes I hadn't seen since I was three. Tears I had caused. Tears I could never wipe away.

_You are not like them_, she told me. _You will never be like them_.

"No, I'm better."

That earned me a slap to the cheek and a stern look.

_You are what I tell you you are_.

That's when I knew nothing would change. She was determined to drag me back home, force me to smear that awful _paint_ onto my arm and act like I was one of them. To act like I didn't know better. She wanted me to fit into their shoes so that I would be accepted. But if that meant hiding what I truly was, if that meant pretending I didn't feel this power welling up inside me, then I would be cutting off my own toes to fit into shoes I didn't even want to wear.

I flushed the concealer down the toilet that night, and every bottle of it she bought after that. My stubbornness would win out eventually, I told myself. She couldn't keep wasting money like this.

Little did I know that meant confinement to the house. Forbidden from school. Forbidden from friends. Forbidden from everything.

So I took what I had and made myself stronger. Stronger so that she would never be able to stop me anymore.


End file.
